


Strangely Honest

by plumedy



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Sharing a Bed, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a hot, dry August, and Watson comes home to find that Holmes has caught a cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strangely Honest

**Author's Note:**

> Look at the tags. I did warn you :D

I confess to a certain fascination with Holmes’ manner of dealing with his fellow human beings. The way he can pick up not only on the clues in others’ attire, but on the minutest changes in their expressions; the way he can say exactly the right thing to convince the incredulous, calm the fretted, console the grieving. And what excites my delight and curiosity above all is how rarely he chooses to benefit from this almost inhumane clairvoyance when it is not for a case that he employs it.

Indeed, when relaxed and idle, he never tries to deliberately charm those around him. His behaviour at such times is disagreeable to many and he makes not a slightest effort to remedy the situation. But I must say that, though I certainly do find myself irritated by some of his minor quirks (such as his astonishing ability to establish even in an empty room the state of perfect disorder), I am never bothered by these states in their essence; in them I glimpse what I can only suppose is the closest to his real self he permits people to see.

I like it when he is like this, idle but not yet anxious over his idleness, nor depressed by it.

And it was mostly the thought of finding him in this mood that comforted me on that dreary summer day when I had returned to London. It had been a dismal, miserable affair, my journey; and one on which I’ve no wish to dwell. Suffice to say, I had had a man die in my arms – a man I’d known, too. And though it had been long ago that we’d last met, time is hardly of importance when it comes to the matters of eternity. It had been bleak, seeing him waste away, so bleak that I had wondered whomever I had wronged so gravely as to deserve to witness things like that.

It was only understandable that I should have a hard time stifling the immediate reaction of delight and gratitude I felt upon seeing Holmes, more so when he gave me the broadest grin in the world and waved both his hands at me so vigorously as to acquire a momentary resemblance to a windmill. He seemed more tempted to embrace me than I had seen him in a long time; but ultimately he refrained from doing so, and not only out of emotional reserve, but also – as I learnt later – out of consideration for my well-being.

For somehow, my inexplicable friend had contrived to catch the common cold in the very middle of an exceptionally hot and dry summer.

I did not know whether to laugh or to cry; “Holmes,” I could only say, “Holmes! You truly are something!” – to which he responded with a polite nod; he had completely lost his voice, you see, and no amount of persuading could make him write his answers on paper, which was why our conversation had soon become rather one-sided. His throat hurt so that there was no way on earth he could have showered me, as he would usually do, with his observations in regard to my mood and my circumstances. And - might I add? - for once, he did not seem eager to do so. For undoubtedly he realized what had happened to me.

Despite his mute but passionate protests I had examined him to make sure that his was, indeed, a superficial illness. Admittedly I had been rather alarmed at first – and understandably so, I suppose. It does a man no good to come home from a funeral and find his best friend suddenly and mysteriously ill. And I knew, of course, that Holmes possessed a singular talent for finding trouble where there was none; his inability to keep his belongings in any kind of reasonable order was only a minor manifestation of that great urge to stick his nose into everyone’s affairs and poke and push all manners of things in hopes that they explode or, at the very least, turn out to be deadly poisonous.

But this time, there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that he was suffering from anything other than simple pharyngitis. And, though relieved, I was also fairly puzzled. Wherever had he managed to find a place cold enough to make him so ill? Holmes was by no means a sickly man.

And then there was the constant vigil of Mrs. Hudson, who had been fussing over Holmes even as I had entered the flat, adjusting the monumental scarf she had given him.

Later, when the evening came and he, to my pleasure, again acquired the ability to speak – if in a somewhat strangled whisper – he told me she’d been feeding him her bouillons and pies ever since he had fallen ill and even offered a range of herbs to put in his tea; a proposal to which he raised no objection, because Mrs. Hudson’s teas were as superb as her cooking.

Considering how much fuss she had made of it, I rather failed to understand how Holmes could have got sick in the first place without her noticing.

“How the deuce, Holmes?..” I asked, puffing at my cigarette. Silence was my answer; he only looked at me with his clear grey eyes and seemed to smile a little.

“Come; I know you can speak now,” I said. “Why, you’ve been talking to me for the past half an hour.”

“I have absolutely no idea why you think I can answer this question,” he whispered, rather pointedly. “How should I know? I simply caught a draught; that is all.”

“A draught! Do you wish to tell me that three days spent eating nothing at all did you no harm but an August draught made you sick to the point of losing your voice?”

“I am no doctor,” Holmes replied with a certain irony, “and when it comes to mysteries of this kind, surely your expertise is much more valuable than mine.”

I gave him a lazy look.

“If you truly want me to make an epicrisis on your case, Holmes, my informed professional opinion is that you are talking rubbish.”

We both laughed aloud. After the oppressive atmosphere of Jameson’s household 221b Baker Street seemed a haven of joy and light-heartedness to me; and I might have been a bit less reserved than I would have normally been. So, it seemed, was Holmes; neither of us could really bring himself to care about the topic in hand.

“Confound you,” croaked poor Holmes, whom this abrupt fit of merriment had apparently cost a great deal of pain. “I beg of you not to joke, Watson, or you’ll end up with a mute flatmate.”

“Do accept my apologies.” I grinned at him, stretching my feet towards the fire. Some minutes passed in silence.

“Whatever you say,” I murmured at last. “I don’t care how you contrived to make yourself ill if you are so intent on not telling me. Do try to not do it again, though – whatever it is that you did.”

He merely gave me a quizzical look, tightening his lips around the stem of his pipe. I did not intend to speak to him further; for there was some truth in what he had said, and as his doctor I would not have advised him to talk too much if he wished to recover his voice sooner rather than later. I found, besides, that I myself was devilishly sleepy, and there was only so much I could do to prevent myself from dozing off in my armchair.

Soon I bid Holmes good night and retired to bed, fully intending to fall asleep as quickly as I could and remain so for as long as possible. But to my surprise and irritation, I found I was unable to sleep; something kept me up – a discomfort whose source I, in my bleary state, had at first failed to identify.

It was _cold_ , I realized after some five minutes. When the rest of the house felt like one big Turkish bath; cold, of all things! And in the worst way possible, too – the damp, bone-eating kind of cold that instantly makes you feel as though you are afflicted with a lethal malady. My long absence and the ensuing lack of regular heating must have done this room bad. I must ask Mrs. Hudson to remedy the situation, I mused, and to take all the linen away lest it should be further dampened. Who would have expected such a problem in August? It must have been the lime tree whose branches had finally thrown their shadow across my windows; there wasn’t nearly enough sunlight coming in.

I remembered Holmes’ violent coughing and my thoughts suddenly came to a standstill.

Really, there could be no other explanation. The fellow’s own motto indicated as much. When you've eliminated the impossible- and certainly Holmes couldn’t have gone on an Arctic voyage or spent my absence living in a mortuary or similar nonsense. But why on earth?

Half an hour later I lay on top of the bedcovers, dressed only in my nightgown, and smoked furiously. I was dying both of cold and of curiosity. An experiment of his, surely! But was getting ill a part of it? Or an unfortunate side effect?

His reluctance to speak of the matter showed that he thought I would not approve. But he must have known that I had grown sufficiently accustomed to living with him to know better than to berate him for his activities. If it was to the end of helping his cause, which I believed with all my heart to be a just and noble one, I was more than willing to put up with his occasionally borrowing my shoes to dissolve them in hydrochloric acid, or with his splattering the floor with red paint, et cetera, et cetera along the same lines.

Even if he had been guided by idle curiosity, would he not have told me? He loved few things more than to recount to me the results of his experiments. Knowing I would not be altogether pleased with their nature hadn’t stopped him before.

There were no answers. Only the end of my cigarette glowed red in the dark, and the shadows of the lime tree branches fell upon my blanket, trembling slightly. I heard a gust of wind outside; and simultaneously, chill air washed over me, making me shudder.

Damn it all, I thought. I would go to Holmes and ask him. The man owed me an explanation – he had failed to warn me, after all, and it was because of this that I was all too close to going down with the very same illness that had temporarily robbed him of his voice.

So I rose and tiptoed, trying not to wake Mrs. Hudson, towards Holmes’ room. The door was closed, and I knocked on it gently. Though I had done that out of courtesy rather than because I believed it likely he was awake, he, rather to my surprise, answered at once;

“Do come in,” he said, in a low voice. “Watson, is it?”

“Indeed, it is,” I whispered back, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. Holmes was looking me straight in the eye, the expression of his finely chiseled face peculiarly unmoving. I could see only the left side of it; the right one was obscured by the gloom. In that moment he rather reminded me of Janus, the god purported by the Romans to have two faces.

“What was it that you wished to ask me about, Watson? And at such an hour - isn't it I who is supposed to drag you out of your bed at night?”

I rapped my fingers against the wall.

“Do tell – was it for an experiment?”

“I beg your pardon?” He looked mildly alarmed now, a sight that discomfited me somewhat. But I persisted.

“Oh, come, Holmes. We both know where you have contracted this mysterious malaise of yours. I swear I harbour no resentment; it is a trifle as you surely understand. But I _am_ about to die of curiosity. Why would you wish to keep your motive a secret?”

“I’m sure I have not a clue as to what you are asking me about,” came his muffled voice. By now I was certain, both from his intonation and the persistence of his denial, that he knew very well the meaning of my question.

“Very well,” I shrugged, and contemplated him closely. He turned away from me, his lively thin mouth turning downwards in an expression of unhappiness. “You were in my room. Spent a night there, even, and ended up catching a cold. Are you writing a research paper on the feigning of illnesses, Holmes?”

“Not at all,” he answered, softly. “All right. All right. It wasn’t to do with an experiment.”

“Not an experiment!” The realization slowly dawned upon me. “Holmes!..”

He did not answer me; but he was scanning me with his large light, backlit eyes in a manner that struck me as uncanny in its scrupulousness.

“You’re not contemptuous of me,” he said, at last, with a sort of apprehensive avidness for whatever it was that he was seeing in my expression. “Why?”

“Why ever would I be?” I laughed incredulously. “Admittedly I’m not yet sure why you did it – though I do have a good guess. And it makes me anything but _contemptuous_ of you.”

“I know it is odd.” He swallowed hard. “Childish. I was lonely. I know I’m- I’m odd, Watson. And I wouldn’t wish for you to think-“

I did find the situation both a little strange and a little amusing, but the tone in which he spoke now tugged right at my heartstrings, and I was no more able to continue to laugh at him than I would have been if he were physically hurt.

“Odd!” I cried, “odd! My dear Holmes, what gave you the notion I consider this a bad thing? I, who gladly took it upon himself to offer you his assistance in the most bizarre of quests?”

His sharp features softened inexpressibly.

“I suppose,” he said.

“You _suppose_ ,” intoned I. “If anything, I’m- I’m touched.”

I then walked towards him and stretched on his bed beside him rather pointedly, folding my arms behind my head. Immediately he gave a small startled cry and whirled around, staring at me.

“Watson?..”

“If you don’t mind, that is,” shrugged I. “I should think there is enough room for the two of us. And I’m not particularly eager to lose _my_ voice, which there would have been no danger of if you only cared to tell me sooner.”

Holmes was staring at me as though I had offered a valuable scientific insight. I smiled at him reassuringly.

“No,” he replied at last. “No, I don’t mind at all.”

With these words, he flung himself back, his dark hair hanging over his face, and pulled the blanket to his chin. At no point did he look at me, staring instead straight ahead into the darkness. After some moments, I gingerly took a part of the blanket to myself; this elicited no reaction from him.

“Holmes,” I called. Instead of answering, he groped the sheets for my hand; which I gave to him, upon some hesitation. His delicate, dexterous fingers gripped my wrist, and he let out a long tremulous sigh. I marvelled at it, even as I squeezed his hand back, my lips trembling in a smile. So that was how he was naturally; odd… one might say – I’d say unique. Strangely honest.


End file.
